sometimes leaps
over the high fence of the corral, and takes all the milk of five cows.

The snow grew seriously deep. Birdie fell thirty times, I am sure.
She seemed unable to keep up at all, so I was obliged to get off and
stumble along in her footmarks. By that time my spirit for overcoming
difficulties had somewhat returned, for I saw a lie of country which I
knew must contain South Park, and we had got under cover of a hill
which kept off the sun. The trail had ceased; it was only one of those
hunter's tracks which continually mislead one. The getting through the
snow was awful work. I think we accomplished a mile in something over
two hours. The snow was two feet eight inches deep, and once we went
down in a drift the surface of which was rippled like sea sand, Birdie
up to her back, and I up to my shoulders!

At last we got through, and I beheld, with some sadness, the goal of my
journey, "The Great Divide," the Snowy Range, and between me and it
South Park, a rolling prairie seventy-five miles long and over 10,000
feet high, treeless, bounded by mountains, and so rich in sun-cured hay
that one might fancy that all the herds of Colorado could find pasture
there. Its chief center is the rough mining town of Fairplay, but
there are rumors of great mineral wealth in various quarters. The
region has been "rushed," and mining camps have risen at Alma and
elsewhere, so lawless and brutal that vigilance committees are forming
as a matter of necessity. South Park is closed, or nearly so, by snow
during an ordinary winter; and just now the great freight wagons are
carrying up the last supplies of the season, and taking down women and
other temporary inhabitants. A great many people come up here in the
summer. The rarefied air produces great oppression on the lungs,
accompanied with bleeding. It is said that you can tell a new arrival
by seeing him go about holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his
mouth. But I came down upon it from regions of ice and snow; and as
the snow which had fallen on it had all disappeared by evaporation and
drifting, it looked to me quite lowland and livable, though lonely and
indescribably mournful, "a silent sea," suggestive of "the muffled
oar." I cantered across the narrow end of it, delighted to have got
through the snow; and when I struck the "Denver stage road" I supposed
that all the difficulties of mountain travel were at an end, but this
has not turned out to be exactl